Are Banks Responsible for Animals Caught in Foreclosures?An Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM

Stephanie Feldstein
December 2009

There's no excuse for waiting to the last minute to figure out where
your dog will end up if you can't take him. The more animals you're dealing
with, the more you need to plan ahead, so you don't end up with 136 animals
with no place to go when you lose the farm.

Earlier this week, a bank foreclosed on an animal sanctuary in Rhode
Island. The owner was evicted, 136 animals were left behind. The Rhode
Island Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals says that somebody
could face charges of animal neglect and cruelty if the Bonniedale Farms
animals aren't provided with basic care ... and that somebody could be Wells
Fargo Bank.

It's the worst possible situation for the cats, dogs, ducks, geese,
sheep, horses, pigs, and llamas who were living at the sanctuary because
they'd already been abandoned once. There's no doubt that the immediate
priority is making sure they get the care they need and that some sort of
plan is put in place to find them a new home. But this situation raises a
bigger question: Who is responsible for the re-abandonment of these animals?

Banks aren't good property owners and, even in better times, they have a
hard time keeping up with the upkeep of their properties. With the high
foreclosure rates in the past few years, cities and states around the
country (including Rhode Island) have started to take abandoned property
care into their own hands to keep their neighborhoods safe and clean.
Usually foreclosed and/or abandoned properties have furniture, clothes, and
trash left behind that someone needs to deal with. Family pets are abandoned
all too frequently, but one or two dogs or cats are easy enough to drop off
at the local shelter. What does a bank do with 136 animals?

Wells Fargo wouldn't let Bonniedale Farms' owner back onto the property
to care for the animals. The bank also allegedly refused help from the
RISPCA. I assume these decisions were following some sort of foreclosure
protocol, but this situation is entirely unprecedented, and protocol doesn't
apply. The management company in charge of the property spoke to the state
veterinarian the day after the owner had been evicted, so they might have
come to a temporary arrangement for vet students from the University of
Rhode Island to help out with the care under the supervision of the RISPCA.
But there's a lot of concern about the future of the animals, and what
happened between the owner's eviction on Monday and the agreement on
Tuesday. When the RISPCA President visited the site, he found animals
without water, and some of the animals might have disappeared.

With the owner not allowed back on the property, the bank has assumed
responsibility for the site and everything on it. It's obviously way out of
its league, and should have engaged the help of RISPCA and the state
veterinarian sooner. But what about the owner's responsibility?

I don't know where the legal lines are drawn for abandonment in this
situation. Since this is unprecedented in the state of Rhode Island, it's
possible there's not a clear legal answer. But this is what bothers me about
the other side of the story: foreclosure is not a surprise. Dan MacKenzie,
the owner, was served notice last spring that his mortgage was on thin ice,
and when the moving trucks arrived earlier this week, there were still 136
animals on the property. Back in March, he knew he was less than two months
away from foreclosure and asked for financial help from the community. There
was some response, but it was too little, too late.

Banks are institutions that have never given us a reason to think they'll
suddenly act sympathetically for the sake of animals or children. If he was
expecting foreclosure by May, it shouldn't have been that big of a surprise
when there was a knock on his door in December. He asked for help in March
to keep his farm of over 100 animals afloat, and when it sank nine months
later, over 100 animals went down with it. There had to be a moment in there
when he knew the future looked bleak. Even an eternal optimist would realize
that reducing the number of animals would reduce costs and therefore make a
recovery more likely. Why didn't he start working with the shelter months
ago, networking with sanctuaries around the country, asking people in the
community to help with fostering? In the half a dozen or stories I've read
on Bonniedale Farm, I haven't seen mention of any efforts to place the
animals.

Maybe he wouldn't have been able to find placement for all of them, and
maybe we'd be seeing these exact same articles of the struggle with the bank
to provide proper care for the animals after the owner's eviction. There's
no excuse for Wells Fargo for making it so difficult for these animals to
receive basic care. But maybe dozens of them would have been safely placed
by now, and fewer of them left behind to suffer.

MacKenzie is probably a big-hearted man who gave everything he had to
these animals and, like so many others who are hit hard by the economy, the
numbers stopped adding up. I feel for him and everything he lost. I live in
a state that's taken one of the hardest hits in this economy, and I know
it's not easy out there. But animals don't understand finances and debt and
mortgage payments. They only understand being left behind. Whether you take
in one companion animal, or a dozen rescues, or a farm full of hundreds of
animals who need sanctuary, those animals depend on you. It's up to you to
make sure they're taken care of. Sometimes that means putting aside pride
and asking for help. Sometimes it means facing harsh realities about your
own uncertain future. Dog rescues get calls every day from people who "have
to move tomorrow" and need someplace for their dog to go.

There's no excuse for waiting to the last minute to figure out where your
dog will end up if you can't take him. The more animals you're dealing with,
the more you need to plan ahead, so you don't end up with 136 animals with
no place to go when you lose the farm.

Fair Use Notice: This document, and others on our web site, may contain copyrighted
material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owners.
We believe that this not-for-profit, educational use on the Web constitutes a fair use
of the copyrighted material (as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law).
If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use,
you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.